I have begun to collect the 45 hg.K from the paper «The Basque Paradigm: Genetic Evidence of a Maternal Continuity in the Franco-Cantabrian Region since Pre-Neolithic Times” (The American Journal of Human Genetics, vol. 90). Unfortunately the paper isn’t for free, but the supplements may be consulted and certainly we shall work to classify these haplotypes yet, but, at a first sight, I’d say that if hg.K isn’t born in the Franco-Cantabrian Refugium (or in Europe), I don’t know where all over the world it could be born.

found also in the paper of Maria LAURA Catelli et al., The impact of modern migrations on present-day multi-ethnic Argentina as recorded on the mitochondrialDNA genome, “BMC Genetics 2011” and I spoke about on “Dienekes Anthropology blog”, here and in many private letters. The problem was if it is a K1a1b1a, as the authors said, and also the same author in a private letter, answering to my questions:

1) How have you classified the haplotype 79 from Buenos Aires like aK1a1b1a? It lacks the mutation 497T, not tested, and William Hurstwould classify it like K2b1 and I, for classifying it like a K1a, havehypothesized a back mutation in 497 from T to the ancestral C, neverhappened says W.Hurst.

Simply because it has transition at 16234 and any other position indicating other better candidate. I agree in that the classification is not very solid but it is to my view the most parsimonious one. It seems that some sub-branch of K1a1b1a could have an extra 114; which is not the case in #79 but it is in other Argentinean profiles. According to what we know from entire genome data, this profile is definitely not K2b1.2) The other K1a1b1a-s are more certain: but it seem from AshkenaziJews. I am searching for Italian K1a1b1a-s, because my theory is thatAshkenazim derive (in part) from Italians converted during the MiddleAges, but I should find some Italian K1a1b1a, being uncertain the trueorigin of FTDNA 135366 K 16223T, 16224C, 16234T, 16311C, 16519C 73G,114T, 263G, 315.1C, 497T. Your samples K1a1b1a-s were from Italians orfrom Jews? And why have you used them to decide the ratioItalian/Spanish mt in Argentine if they were Jews?Our samples are “residents” in Argentina; they naturally speak Spanish and it is most likely that about half of them have about 50% Italian ancestry. Note however that Argentina has a huge Jews community. It is said that the third most important Jews community in America is in Argentina (first: USA and Canada). Note also that our paper is a meta-analysis and therefore, we have little information concerning the samples provided by others. A meta-analysis tries to minimize the effect of potential sampling biases in admixture estimates; we discuss about this in the article.

3) This is only an ascertainment: “Perhaps you are not interested toother haplogroups, but in those data there are two interesting R0a1a1and probably R0a2 with many mutationsin HVRI from the Italian Refugium, where surely R0a was, not in MiddleEast”. Glad to see them, but after the paper of Achilli and some test Idid c/o FTDNA, also FTDNA has admitted it: “Mitochondrial haplogroupR0a (formerly known as pre-HV1) is a primarily European haplogroupthat was present in Europe beginning approximately 20,000 years ago.It occurs in very low frequency throughout Europe, and some descendantlineages of the original haplogroup R0a appear in the Near East as aresult of migration. It was probably one of the original mitochondrialhaplogroupsin Europe, and likely pre-dates the occurrence of farmingin Europe. Future work will better resolve the distribution andhistorical characteristics of this haplogroup”.Good to know; effectively, e.g. one of them (16126 16168 16264 16295 16362) is found in several Italian locations (including Sicily), but also in Turkey (Kurds, Anatolia).

4) Also an ascertainment is having found some links between somehaplotypes of your paper and some Italian ones: “And watch how closeis this Italian K1a with 1189 sample from San Juan: 16192T 16224C16284G 16286G 16311C 16519C 073G 263G 309.1C 315.1C 497TMitosearch MGMSN from SMGF. How old is K1a in Italy!”I don’t know!! A proper dating would require a good number of entire genomes...and founder analysis…Regards,A.S.

This K1a1b1 Basque on the “Ian Logan spreadsheet” demonstrates once more that probably the Basque with this signature (16278T etc.)* are K1a1b1 and this sample has had beyond the back mutation of 16224 also that of 16519. Very interesting.